“We are Taught to Hate Hypocrisy. We Shouldn’t.”

That’s the title of a recent essay by Lydia Polgreen.

The piece begins with a personal story, an anecdote

that had me nodding vigorously in recognition. The

author describes that she once lived near a busy

highway exit that had, in her words, a generous merge

lane. Nevertheless, drivers would often cut in at the

last possible moment, making the wait longer for

everyone who exercised a little common decency and

followed the rules. Polgreen recalls how she would

descend into a rage over the inconsiderate, selfish

drivers each time she took that exit headed home.

She also confesses that her rage was tinged with a

self-congratulatory smugness. I would never do such

a thing. She continues, “Except of course I have, I do,

many times, and doubtless will again…Just the other

day I snuck off the highway with a quick, opportunistic

swerve into a honking line of waiting drivers. I was in

a hurry. What can I say? I’m a hypocrite.”

It’s possible that you might relate. Now maybe

your hypocrisy of choice is not aggressive driving

(but maybe it is). My guess is you have one. I’ll go

next. I can be fierce and uncompromising in harsh

assessment of those who are overly attached to

their phones. I find myself rolling my eyes when I see

people who seem distracted and disengaged from

what is literally happening right in front of them IRL

(In Real Life). Families out to dinner staring down at

their devices rather than engaging in conversation

with their loved ones. Missing precious moments. I

would never do such a thing. Except I have. I do. More

often than I care to admit, I catch myself doing the

very thing I condemn. That’s not quite true. Usually

someone else catches me doing that thing. Usually

one of our boys, after he has repeated a question

three times and been given no response. “Dad! Look

up! Listen to me!” What can I say? I’m a hypocrite.

In these polarized and tension-tinged times, it’s

perhaps the most pervasive polemic, particularly

in public life. Polgreen calls ours the “golden age of

allegations of hypocrisy.” It has never been easier to

compare the words and deeds of people we don’t

personally know. We live in an era of permanent

records, and those records accessible to anyone with

WIFI, offering (hear Polgreen’s words again) “an allyou-can-eat buffet of human inconsistency.”

The Christian movement has been at the tip of the

spear in recent hypocrisy wars. The Church was once

assumed immune from human judgment. Instead,

the Church (or, more accurately, its leaders) did the

judging. Our sacred texts describe high standards of

ethical behavior and moral purity, standards that we

have often been better at preaching than practicing.

And as that gap between words and actions was

increasingly exposed, the reputation of religion

(and, again, its leaders) had farther to fall than other

institutions. And fall it has. Crash landing. To the

delight of some and the horror of others. As a pastor,

I hear the criticism often. Churches are filled with

hypocrites. A hypocrite on every pew, and especially

behind the pulpit, where they preach grace while

practicing hostility. In this golden age, allegations of

hypocrisy abound.

I am not here to defend those who twist the gospel

into knots, trying to justify judgment that finds

no basis in scripture or in the life of Jesus Christ.

Those of us who are trying to be his followers must

oppose such voices. But when we do, we must

be spiritually mature enough to know and name

our own brokenness, our own sinfulness, yes, our

own hypocrisy. Friends, the demands of Christian

discipleship are costly. They include sacrificing our

self-righteousness: wagging the finger, pointing out

somebody else’s inconsistencies, or perhaps worst of

all, taking delight in the fall of another.

The Apostle Paul spent much of his life thinking

about how life in Christian community works. Two

thousand years later we must not construe his

letters as grand detached dissertations intentionally

designed to set the course of Christian theology for

all of time. Not so. The epistles of Paul were written

to small, struggling bands of newly formed believers

who, like the apostle, had been transformed by an

encounter with Jesus Christ and were struggling

to understand what this might mean for how they

should live their lives. They were trying to embody

a new way of being together. Paul’s letters provide

encouragement and instruction for a fledgling

movement in the shadow of the Roman Empire.

The letter to the Romans is written to such a

community. Though Paul did not launch the church

and had never visited its members, he knew their

struggles because their struggles are human

struggles. Among them was this: the congregation

in Rome was made up of an odd mixed-up group

of people. People from different backgrounds who

had just recently held divergent perspectives on

important—even essential—matters. A group of Jews

and Gentiles who came from different backgrounds.

Their traditions and their customs were radically

different and often opposed to one another. How

does Paul approach this divided congregation? Well,

as a former high school debater, I am impressed

with Paul’s strategy here. At the outset, the apostle

begins to enumerate a distinctly Gentile list of sins. He

names them one by one, and he piles them on. You

can almost hear the other half of the congregation,

those who were faithful, dedicated followers of the

Levitical law, applauding the bold preaching of

Paul, enjoying this catalog of their neighbors’ most

unfortunate shortcomings. Things are looking good

until, well, after Chapter One comes Chapter Two.

And here, Paul’s next move is to my mind his most

brilliant. He shifts the focus from the sins of one group

to the judgment of the other. He boldly announces

that those who judge the sins of someone else are

committing what they are condemning. Hypocrisy.

To make Paul’s words particularly poignant for our

time, imagine for a moment that you were in a group

made up of both Democrats and Republicans. On

second thought, you don’t even have to imagine that!

But let’s imagine that I stood in this pulpit listing

all the wrongs and the offenses, the sins and the

shortcomings, of let’s just say the Democrats. Those

in the crowd who are of the other party might find

yourselves feeling pretty good. Increasingly selfassured. Righteous even. Enjoying every moment as

I catalog the shortcomings of your neighbors. Until

after Chapter One comes Chapter Two. The language

shifts. The preacher turns to our Republican folks and

says, “By the way, if you have found yourself judging

the other side, you are just as guilty as they are.” You

see how timely these texts can be!

Again, as a powerful preacher and persuader, Paul

returns to this same topic in the seventh chapter. But

this time he makes it personal. Before this group of

believers, he confesses his own brokenness. With

genuine exasperation, Paul acknowledges that he

often falls short of what God intends, even when he

knows to the core of his soul what that is. Sin dwells

within. This pernicious trap is difficult to slip. What can

Paul say? He’s a hypocrite.

Many criticize and condemn the Church as an

assembly of close-minded judgmental hypocrites.

And you know what? They are right. We are a broken

people, a dim reflection of the community we are

called to be. And that is why, every week, we come

together, and we admit how we have failed. We say

that we are sorry. We lean on the grace we need to

try it all over again. We challenge ourselves to be

changed in time, to be renewed, to see what God

sees, to love as Jesus loves. We know that this is a

slow process. It will take longer than the sum of our

years on earth because our humanity will always get

in the way. We require the support of a community,

the reconciliation and forgiveness that we receive

when we freely admit that we are broken. But the

joy that comes from this striving, the fulfillment that

comes from living for something more than ourselves,

is well worth the inevitable setbacks and failures.

In time, we come to rely not on our own efforts but

on the unconditional love of a forgiving God. And

perhaps we come to extend that love and grace and

forgiveness to others as well.

According to Paul, the world itself has been turned

upside-down by the radical love of God in Jesus

Christ. This is no subtle change—something

significant at the heart of reality has been utterly

transformed, and we cannot live the way we did

before we heard this gospel, this good news. We

cannot go back to our old habits of gossip, division,

cynicism, fear, judgment, hatred, and exclusion. No,

we must care for one another. We must pray for one

another. We must talk to one another. And perhaps

most important of all, we must listen to one another.

God forbid we ever become so puffed up with pride

that we forget how to listen.

David French, who happens to be a colleague of

Lydia Polgreen’s from the other side of the ideological

spectrum, recently wrote an essay titled, “Some

Think What You Preach Matters More Than What You

Do. It Doesn’t.” I think Paul would be cheering if he

could read the final lines of the essay. “The American

church is torn apart by conflict over theology. But it

should be united by the pursuit of virtue. The church

that truly influences a nation will be one that focuses

on doing good more than on being right.”

In the weeks ahead, could we try to make that shift

at Second Church? Could we commit, covenant, to

spend marginally less time pointing out somebody

else’s vice and just a little more time pursuing virtue?

Friends at Second, listen. Constantly seeking out the

hypocrisy of others is a spiritually bankrupt downward

spiral. Not because you’ll be without examples—

there’s an endless supply of them—but because there

will always be a hypocrite in the mirror. That’s the one

you are most able to influence.

So let’s be honest about our failures. Let’s be more

forgiving of the failures of others. Even the ones who

cut us off in traffic. After all, hypocrites are always

welcome on the road of faith. And thanks be to God

for that. Amen.